Salt Spring Fire-Rescue was called to the scene of an unknown spill on St. Mary Lake Tuesday afternoon after residents spotted a viscous turquoise liquid rimming the shore near Langs Road.

“I was appalled when I saw it,” said local property owner Jack Giles, adding he’d never seen anything like it during his nine years on the lake.

While the substance certainly looked like it could have been paint or another unknown product with chemical origins, it was quickly determined to be a concentration of blue green algae. North Salt Spring Waterworks District’s environmental manager Meghan McKee arrived on scene not long after Salt Spring firefighter Mitchell Sherrin and confirmed the most likely identification.

“It’s almost certainly algae,” McKee said after scooping up a plastic bottle of forest-green liquid.

“I would stress this is normal for this time of year and it’s just alarming because of its colour,” she added.

McKee explained that cyanobacteria can control their buoyancy to move up and down a water column, and often rise to the lake’s surface at night. Tuesday morning’s brisk winds pushed a concentration of algae into the northern shoreline, which is what made the colour appear so intense.

Neither of NSSWD’s two water intakes are located near that part of the lake, but the district conducts weekly water quality tests and has yet to detect any toxic bacteria this winter. Results from the recent sample probably won’t be available until after Christmas. In the meantime, McKee advised pet owners to keep their animals out of the lake and property owners who draw water directly from the lake to ensure it passes through several filtration cycles.

The Ministry of Environment and the Capital Regional District would be notified, McKee said.

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Edward Steven Petty
August 17, 1949 – December 5, 2015

Steve Petty, passed peacefully in his sleep on December 5, 2015 in his adopted Salt Spring home, Kunzang Dechen Osel Ling (KDOL) Buddhist retreat facility on Mt. Tuam at the age of 66 after a year long struggle with cancer. Steve is pre-deceased by his father, Edward William and his mother Audrey, nee Gazzard, Petty. He is survived by his two elder sisters, Denise Collings of Fredericton, NB and Lee McCarter of Sarnia, Ont.

Steve was born in Kitchener, Ontario on August 17, 1949. He graduated from high school in London, Ontario and attended two years of college. Having been born into a military family he was used to moving around and so after leaving college he continued in his parapatetic ways. His travels finally brought him to Salt Spring where in 1981 he settled on Mt. Tuam so that he could build the first 3 year retreat facility at KDOL. Afterwards he moved to Fulford Harbour where he built a home for he and his partner. Again the wandering spirit took hold of him and he travelled to Colorado, New York, Cape Breton, Vancouver, Thailand where he continued to use the skills he learned as a finishing carpenter to help building projects at Buddhist centres.

Steve loved the outdoors and spent a lot of his life camping, canoeing and hiking. He was an avid amateur photographer and took photos of all the places he visited.
Steve was cremated at Royal Oak Cemetary in Victoria, BC on December 8, 2015 and his ashes will be dispersed at a designated site of his choosing as per his wishes at a later time to be determined.

His family and friends will miss his kind and gentle soul, his great sense of humour. We wish to thank all those who helped him in his final days particularly Dr. Sadowski, Ron Puhky, Chuck Alsberg, Salt Spring Home Care Services and many others.

Steve’s final wish was for those wanting to make a contribution in memory of him could do so by making a donation to KDOL in support of three designated projects.

Steve will be lovingly remembered and missed by many close friends from his youth in hometown London, Ontario, especially lifelong buddies who wandered across the continent and beyond with him starting in the 1970s on a search for peace, love and beauty in this world.

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Jerzy Porebski

July 30,1946 – December 14, 2015.

Jerzy Porebski passed away peacefully on December 14, 20015 at Lady Minto Hospital, at the age of 69 with his family by his side.
 
He will be remembered by his daughters Alinka Porebska and Ania Porebski, and his grandchildren Maya and Indigo Porebska-Smith and Leifen Porebska Coverdale.

He will always be Loved.

Service will be held on December 30, 2015 at 1:30 at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, 135 Drake Rd.

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Shaughan (Johnnie) Wells
Nov. 1928 – Dec. 2015

Our mother passed peacefully into the next world on Dec. 18, surrounded by love. She joins her eldest son Micheal and her husband Barry.

Johnnie leaves behind her children Judye, Stephen (Lani), Melissa (Steve), Simon (Kristan), grandchildren Derek, Cody, Cole, Tyler, Jordan, Sophia and Roman, “adopted” kids Sandi and John and all those she scooped up into her enormous heart over the years.

Johnnie will be remembered for her feisty nature, her flair for the dramatic, her desire to help and her love of gardening.

Many thanks to Drs Shane and Ashley and to the kind and caring staff at Lady Minto.
A celebration of her life will be held in 2016, the details of which will be announced here.

Donations in honour of Johnnie may be made to the Lady Minto Hospital Foundation.

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Salt Spring’s Local Trust Committee is giving the Parks and Recreation Commission a second crack at a playing fields project planned for the Brinkworthy neighbourhood near Ganges.

Trustees voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to defer PARC’s application for non-farm use of a 15-acre property in the Agricultural Land Reserve. The delay is hoped to encourage further consultation with farmland advocates and neighbourhood residents.

“This is all a question of due process. It’s about community engagement. It’s about talking to one another. It’s about dialogue,” said trustee Peter Grove. “I am a complete believer in getting people together and talking about options and brainstorming ideas; when you do that, wonderful solutions very often materialize.”

PARC could return with an updated proposal at the Salt Spring LTC’s Thursday, Jan. 14 meeting.

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Salt Spring’s Local Trust Committee has ordered its staff to allocate up to $15,000 in unspent funds from this year’s budget to develop an inventory of heritage shoreline sites.

Information about locations’ heritage value and character “related to human occupation or use” will be collected and incorporated into the island’s official community plan.

A staff report presented at last week’s LTC meeting suggests the move gives local trustees a leadership role when it comes to the protection of First Nations heritage sites.

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B.C. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Todd Stone included the coastal ferry system on his wish list during a meeting with his federal counterparts in Ottawa earlier this month.

Stone met with Infrastructure and Communities Minister Amarjeet Sohi and Transportation Minister Marc Garneau to outline B.C.’s priorities in those two areas and discuss federal investment possibilities. Included on the list of conversation points was the disparity between Pacific and Atlantic ferry systems when it comes to federal support. B.C. receives a federal subsidy of $1.41 per passenger (around $30 million per year) compared to $493 per passenger ($120 million) for the Atlantic provinces.

As the NDP opposition pointed out before the visit, getting the disparity addressed should be a top concern now that a new government is in power in Ottawa.

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Wandering into Michael deRoos and Michiru Main’s workshop summons the spirits of Herman Melville, Jacques Cousteau and Jules Verne, all under the same roof.

The partially completed building on Robinson Road houses at least three killer whales, a 250-pound humpback skull, a small school of porpoises and a lone minke whale. Larger specimens sprawl across the floor. Smaller creatures are stowed in well-marked cardboard boxes or plastic bins.

“It’s a massive puzzle,” Main said on a recent tour. “We’re pretty meticulous when we exhume them; everything is well documented and labelled.”

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Salt Spring is rallying around longtime islander Katya Mycyk, who was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer a second time after achieving total remission in November 2014.

Mycyk is a fabric artist whose tie-dyed Righteous Rags products have adorned thousands of islanders and visitors. She’s also a professional party planner who has put together many of the events islanders have enjoyed over the years. During much of the past five years she has simultaneously been fighting cancer without submitting to chemotherapy.

Donations can be made through the YouCaring page called Help Katya Survive Her Stage 4 Breast Cancer, or in person at Salt Spring Books.

Learn more about Mycyk’s journey in surviving Stage 4 cancer once before on her blog Not Dead Yet, at https://katyaincuba.wordpress.com.

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The year 2015 was a banner one for the Driftwood Christmas Story Contest, with a whopping 260 entries submitted by kids aged 4 to 17. Stories came from all schools on Salt Spring Island, some home learners, plus Galiano Community School and Pender Island School.

Thanks are extended to all the teachers who guided their students’ participation and to our community judges Victoria Olchowecki, Betty Poole, Louise Nye, Janet Smith and Barb DuMoulin.

First and second place winners in each age category are printed throughout this issue of the paper. Those young writers can pick up prize-winning cheques ($25 for first place and $15 for second) from the Driftwood office or receive them by mail upon request.

Winners and honourable mentions (printed in no particular order) are as follows.

Ages 4-6: First place, Freya Sinoneau, Dragon and Santa. Second place, Alex Staicesku, Snow Wraith’s Christmas. Honourable mention: Saoirse Ayton, The Night Before Christmas; Renee Hayden, The Cat Saved Christmas; Ayla Wirth, The Missing Reindeer; Branden Kelly, The Polar Bear Saved Christmas; Max Grzybowski, The Best Christmas Ever!

Ages 7-8: First place, Maya Reinhardt, The Christmas Surprise. Second place, Zoë Sanchez Wickland, The Reindeer Who Couldn’t Fly. Honourable mention: Jane Davies, The Noise on Christmas; Pia Sparanese, The Dog Saves Christmas; Liam Docherty, The Christmas Astronaut; Xiomara, Pearl’s Magical Christmas.

Age 9: First place, Lizzie Thompson, The Day the Elves Went on Strike. Second place, Michael Paterson, A Dog’s Christmas. Honourable mention: Olivia Sugden, The Elf; Ronin Gebhard, The Christmas Tree; Ronan Wardroper, Aquasphere; Ryan Dunbar, A Special Christmas; Maria Lay, How Holly Saved Christmas; Markus Stamatiou, The Christmas Clunk. 

Age 10: First place, Jane Holmes, The Aurora Wolf. Second place, India Hayden, Elanora Visits Frosty. Honourable mention: William McDermott, The Journey; Annika Fleming, A Christmas Kitten for Sara; Amelia Niedziela, The Snowman.

Ages 11-12: First place, Om Decosas, The Dreadful Story. Second place, Ben Adelson, The Mountain Cat’s Christmas. Honourable mention: Joseph Roberts, Snow; Malia Steele, The Angel Pup; Malcolm Colwell, The Christmas Surprise; Christopher Elwell, Sabotage.

Ages 13-14: First place, Taeven Lopatecki, Coming Home. Second place, Kaylee Lapierre, Santa’s Real?! Honourable mention: Mac Flett, Rudolph; Josephine Gaffney; Elizabeth Woodley, The One Where Mommy Kisses Santa. 

Ages 16-17: First place, Shayce Johnston, Tourne Sol. Second place, Kaya Mongard, One Piece of Paper. Honourable mention: Kiara Johnston, Butterfly Kisses; Lily Kingscote, Christmas Lights; Sam Besley.

GISS ESL students: First place, David Sanchez Galicia, Christmas on Other Planets. Second place, Fernanda Paluri, Christmas. Honourable mention: Ryo Sakamoto, How Japanese People Celebrate Christmas; Kanae Chiba, Santa Claus Company; Jihee Choi, Under the Mistletoe; Tamaki Yoshihara, Christmas Eve.

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A new report on the Salt Spring Fire Protection District’s administrative functions reveals the growing pains caused by shifting responsibilities over the past year, and makes several recommendations on how to smooth internal relations.

The district’s board of trustees accepted the report by TallSky Consulting Group at its Dec. 7 meeting. The administrative review fulfills another consultant’s recommendation, as one of the actions suggested in Walker Resource Group’s Fire Service Review.

TallSky conducted interviews with Salt Spring Fire District trustees and administrators as well as Walker Resource Group and FireWise Consulting representatives. The consultant also assembled data surveyed from 21 other improvement districts and municipalities to attempt cross-comparisons, although differing structures made this difficult.

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Salt Spring Fire-Rescue was called to the scene of an unknown spill on St. Mary Lake Tuesday afternoon after residents spotted a viscous turquoise liquid rimming the shore near Langs Road.

“I was appalled when I saw it,” said local property owner Jack Giles, adding he’d never seen anything like it during his nine years on the lake.

While the substance certainly looked like it could have been paint or another unknown product with chemical origins, it was quickly determined to be a concentration of blue-green algae. North Salt Spring Waterworks District’s environmental manager Meghan McKee arrived on scene not long after Salt Spring firefighter Mitchell Sherrin and confirmed the most likely identification.

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Salt Springers can start the new year celebrating their warm and caring community while helping others in need through a refugee benefit concert at Fulford Hall set for Friday, Jan. 1.

A star-studded line-up of Salt Spring musicians and artists will be donating their time to the event, with all proceeds going to the Salt Spring Refugee Sponsorship Group effort to bring six Syrian refugees to the island.

The evening variety concert will include “loads of the usual suspects in unusual roles,” as well as some more familiar ones. MC Arthur Black will host a show that includes everyone from award-winning writer/playwright/actor Chris Humphreys and poet Peter Levitt to Valdy and Grade 12 student Daniel Hunter, who was last year’s GISS Musician of the Year. Yael Wand, a new islander who can be heard on CBC radio, borrows elements from jazz, roots and world to serve up a scrumptious musical feast.

Tara MacLean will perform solo and in a duo with James Cowan. She believes she is just like every Canadian in her desire to help the refugees in any way she can.

“It’s such a giant problem,” she said. “And I feel like this is one way we can feel like we’re really doing something, helping to bring this family here.”

Advance tickets are available at Salt Spring Books. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7.

There is also a linked online fundraiser at fundrazr.com, which people can donate to until Jan. 30. 

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Andrea Russell of Muse Masks will once again offer her skills to the community with a three-hour workshop set for Sunday, Jan. 3.

Participants will learn to sculpt vegetable-tanned leather using water to create wonderful masks and costume accessories. Attendees can create their own designs, or make a mask using one of Russell’s hundreds of characters and templates. Samples of the many possibilities can be viewed at musemasks.com.

The finished mask will be of natural leather, and details of how to paint or decorate later on (if desired) will be provided.

The class is suitable for ages 8 and up. Parents are welcome to work on something with their children if they wish.

Pre-registration is required to ensure enough supplies are on hand. Call Andrea or email for more info and registration at 250-539-5258 or thaifirefly@gmail.com.

The workshop will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the location to be announced.

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Winter’s drab atmosphere can be brightened with splashes of light and colour when the Salt Spring Photography Club presents members’ photos in the lobby of ArtSpring through January.

“There will be a wide range of photographic styles and image types, including still-lifes, nature/wildlife, close-ups, macros, landscapes and portraits in full colour, black and white, and several places in between,” explains a press release.

“Some strive to represent the subject exactly as the camera saw it, whereas others explore the many possibilities for image transformation using a computer. Some employ the very best lenses and a massive tripod from top manufacturers to capture images with many mega-pixels, while others use a smart phone that goes everywhere with ease.”

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Gulf Islands Secondary School’s Acting 11/12 class will present a unique spin on a beloved children’s classic with a staging of The Phantom Tollbooth running Jan. 6 to 8 at ArtSpring.

Based on the 1961 novel by Norton Juster, the GISS play is an original adaptation that retains much of the book’s structure and key components while allowing a little room for creative licence. Like many of the group’s most successful productions, the plot follows the main character on an unexpected journey in which magical beings are met and important life lessons are learned.

This time the protagonist is a boy named Milo, who can never work out what to do with himself and yet finds learning and schoolwork a waste of his time. One day, a magical tollbooth suddenly appears in his bedroom and transports him into “a land much different from his own.” There he meets a cast of quirky characters, gains two trusted helpers and carries out a mission to rescue two princesses, thereby restoring peace to the Kingdom of Knowledge.

Tickets are available at the ArtSpring box office or through tickets.artspring.ca.

Performances start at 7:30 p.m. and run for approximately 90 minutes.

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Everyone is welcome to celebrate the new year with a service at All Saints By-the-Sea, where the feast day of the name of Jesus and the Anglican parish’s annual blessing of time will take place at noon on New Year’s Day.

Information from the parish notes that Br. Geoffrey Tristram, an Anglican monk and superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, calls time “a gift of God that is as fundamental to human well-being.” It has also been as abused and polluted as our earth, “although the destructive effects of this abuse may be less immediate for us to discern,” Tristram says.

The Jan. 1 service will include song, prayer and the celebration of Holy Communion, as well as music by Rasma Bertz.

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As 2015 morphs into 2016, it seems more satisfying to look forward to the future rather than to cast a nostalgic glance back at what has (or might have) happened in the year gone by.

As the remaining days of the year dwindle down to zero, and that spanking new unmarked calendar beckons, let us spend a little time speculating upon what might lie ahead.

Most all of you have heard about Nostradamus, the 16th-century French apothecary and visionary, whose predictions included great wars, disasters and political upheavals. You may also be familiar with the Mayan Prophesy foretelling the end of the world in December 2012-ish.

In all probability, you know nothing about prophetess Baba Vanga, the blind mystic and clairvoyant healer, who attained a following of millions by the time she died in 1996 at the age of 85. Heralded across Russia and most of Europe as the “Nostradamus of the Balkans,” the Bulgarian born Baba Vanga became revered as the supernatural saint who was able to foretell the future as well as heal both the rich and poor.

Even as far back as the 1950s, Baba Vanga warned that the polar ice caps would melt and sea temperatures would rise, thus making her one of the first voices to predict climate change. Among her other prophesies were the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Chernobyl disaster, the Sept. 11 attack on the twin towers in New York City, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear spill.

Not only did she also foretell the “Arab Spring” in 2010 and the birth of ISIS, but she was able to foresee an invasion of Europe by Muslim extremists in 2016. In fact, she predicted that Europe would cease to exist by the end of 2016 and by the year 2043 a Muslim caliphate would be established in Rome.

To be entirely truthful, not all of Baba Vanga’s prophesies were entirely spot-on. For instance, her call that World War III would begin in 2010 and be over by 2014 somehow snuck by my awareness of current events. Similarly, her prediction that an artificial sun, built to illuminate the dark side of the earth, would malfunction and cause planetary drought has somehow seemed to have missed the mark (at least so far).

Nevertheless, in the spirit of looking forward towards the future, we here at Nobody Asked Me . . . But have gathered together our leftover Christmas turkey entrails and have channelled the spirit of Baba Vanga to poke her way through these viscera and show us what 2016 will look like right here on Salt Spring.

The first issue that bubbles to the surface is the much-maligned sinkhole sitting smack dab in the middle of the road at the foot of Ganges Hill. Does our prophetess foresee a solution to the soggy problem anytime in 2016?

The answer is not completely coherent, but what we are able to gather from her garbled musings is that the unwanted runoff should not be looked at necessarily as a problem. Instead, we should consider it the beginning of a trade agreement with Pacifica, an ancient fabled land that ages ago sank into the deepest part of the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean and now lies in a direct line exactly on the opposite side of the earth from Salt Spring Island. In return for all this water rich in sea life and other as-yet-undetermined materials coming our way through a pipeline running directly through the centre of the earth, we agree to send them something we have in great excess: hot air, especially the heavy breaths expelled whilst debating the pros and cons of any issue where half the population lines up on one side and the other half digs in on the other.

A second question resting heavily on our combined psyche is whether this coming year will bring any inroads as regards the governance issue on the rock. We ask Baba Vanga directly whether or not she sees incorporation coming our way in 2016.

As we observe her, she sways back and forth on her haunches and lets out a guttural wail. Our first impression is that this is not a good sign for incorporation happening any time soon. However, we are chided by Baba Vanga for coming to a too hasty conclusion. In fact, she assures us that 2016 will bring about a procedural review on whether a municipality is a viable option. This will be followed by a plebiscite to determine whether a referendum should be drawn up. Finally, in the waning hours of late December, both the factions either supporting or opposing incorporation will agree that the subject needs more study and everyone will go home feeling that great progress is being made.

Baba Vanga now goes into her “lightning round” of predictions where she tackles a potpourri of island concerns in a series of quick pronunciations:

USER FRIENDLY FERRY SCHEDULE: just as soon as they fix that artificial sun.

COMPLETION OF GANGES BOARDWALK: immediately after aforementioned ferry schedule is nailed down.

CFSI FM RADIO STATION: will be “rockin’ the rock” again once its “licence to chill” is renewed.

PRIDE PARADE: will continue to grow in size and scope as the LGBTQ community welcomes asexuals and trisexuals to come join the party.

Nobody asked me, but I believe that this is especially the time of year when our spirits should be infused with optimism and good faith. As the new year descends upon us, the page that marks the future is literally blank. We could allow it to be filled in by Baba Vanga and any number of other seers and clairvoyants.

On the other hand, we could instead grasp the future in our own hands and work together to make this year a better year and this world a better home. Happy New Year, Salt Spring. 

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I am responding to the Dec. 23 “Multipurpose room a win win” letter from Darlene Steele, the president of SSPLASH.

Ms. Steele takes issue with the decision to upgrade the Portlock Park meeting room, arguing instead for a multipurpose room to be added to the pool.

First I will reiterate what I have said many times about how much the volunteer CRD advisory commissions are valued. They have the role to recommend service and budget actions within their area (such as parks and recreation), while I have the responsibility for the Salt Spring Island budget as a whole. I am also the lead on our island when it comes to seeking CRD board of directors approval for that budget.

In my four years in office there have been very few cases where, after full and open public discussion with the many CRD commissions, there has not been agreement on CRD budget line items to be put forward. My decision to defer the multipurpose room PARC budget discussion and consideration to the 2017 CRD budget cycle is a rare exception.

Is upgrading of the Portlock portable “dumb and dumber,” as Ms. Steele has suggested? First, some clarification, the Portlock upgrade budget is $25,000, the $50,000 quoted is incorrect. The proposed capital budget for the multipurpose room is $255,000, of which the offer from SSPLASH is $25,000; the rest would be taken from the pool budget, which includes support for maintaining the core pool facilities, which are aging. In addition, incremental administrative support would be necessary for a multipurpose room and add to running costs for the pool.

At less than 10 per cent of the proposed multipurpose room budget, will an upgrade of the Portlock portable provide good value? The history of the portable use would support a strong “yes” answer. Almost all the CRD commissions, committees, working groups and larger meetings with staff used the portable regularly for no incremental charge. Since the lack of availability of the portable, costs to rent other venues have escalated.

In addition, the portable has video-conferencing capability, which has been used for meetings with staff in Victoria, reducing travel and other costs, and providing more opportunities for regular communication. This service will again be available and staff support is already in place.

Other factors in the decision to defer the multipurpose room review include the fact that two Salt Spring Island studies are pending that could impact the provision of community facilities. The first is the recently completed first draft of the Shared Space feasibility study and the second is the Salt Spring Island Incorporation Study. Both of these studies should be available for review by mid 2016.

The writer is the CRD director for Salt Spring Island.

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Latest reports from scientists have managed to pinpoint exactly where global warming will hit first.

Helped with scientific evidence from the International Spaced Out Station, it has been revealed that the rise in sea levels, coupled with higher rainfall levels, will cause a torrent of water to hit Ganges, a small town on Salt Spring Island. It will manifest itself in the form of a river crossing a road near a well-known landmark bakery.

A spokesman for the bakery said that, “The ‘crust’ of the matter is that we will have to have a swim up-counter if things go on like this. We might have to sell sticky soggy pudding!”

ArtSpring, not slow to take advantage of the situation, has already booked Michael Flatley’s Riverdance in eager anticipation of a theatre in the round performance. 

Suggestions for other shows will be welcomed. The ballet “Tsawwassen Lake” comes to mind.

Scientists have carried out tests to try to understand how the huge melt in the ice cap has resulted in Ganges High Street becoming the focus of higher water levels. It is thought that part of the problem is caused by the confusion when turning left; due to lack of directions.

“The water really should have gone another way,” said a spokesman. “But instead it has taken the most direct route and we are thinking of renaming the town ‘The North West Passage.’”

“Yukon see what needs doing,” a local outdoor pursuits expert said. “We need a bridge!”

“Not bloody likely,” came an outcry. “We aren’t having a bridge on Salt Spring!”

“Ferrynough,” was the reply, “but something has to be done. Maybe the town could hold its gumboot gala rally in the middle of the road. In the spring!”

Or maybe it could become a new route for BC Ferries.

In the meantime, I envision the following Island Escapades advertisement: “Scuba Diving Kits Half Price Sale! Buy now before stocks are swept away!”

The writer is a Southey Point Road resident commenting on the water running out of a hole in Fulford-Ganges Road at the bottom of Ganges Hill. 

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